June 11, 2021 • 43 mins
Today, HBO is known for its original programming that's so popular people can't stop pirating it. We look at the company's current strategy.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and love all Things Tech. And we are in another
classic episode, folks. This episode originally published May twelve, two
(00:25):
thousand fourteen. It is the third part of our HBO story,
the conclusion at that point of the HBO Story. Obviously, again,
a lot of stuff has happened since then, so at
some point I will need to do a big update.
In fact, if you think that that's a good idea,
let me know on Twitter. I usually save this for
the end, but on Twitter we use the handle tech
(00:47):
Stuff hs W, So if you ever have a suggestion,
send it my way through there. But now let's go
back and listen to this classic episode the HBO Story,
Part three. So July to nine, Time Incorporated acquires a
fifty nine point three percent steak and a little company
called Warner Communications Incorporated's creating Time Warner Incorporated the largest
(01:13):
media and entertainment company in the world, and the following year,
Time Incorporate would acquire the remainder of Warner Communications, making
it a fully integrated company, So now it's even larger
media giant. HBO is still a big player in that
enormous corporation, And that same year HBO would launch HBOS
(01:36):
lesion Is and Espanol, later renamed HBO Espanol and then
later renamed HBO Latino. So you may have guessed. This
is a channel that offered in parallel with HBO for
certain Spanish speaking markets about twenty initially, and took advantage
of something called the secondary Audio program or s a
P to replace the English speaking track with a span
(01:59):
of speaking one. And it was a big success, so
much so that other markets began to add this to
their service, and so much so that eventually they would
start producing their own original content for those markets. Right,
so instead of just say, taking an HBO original that
was done in English and redubbing it, they actually made
their own award winning HBO originals. So you could, if
(02:22):
you were a Spanish speaking person, watch these and and
really appreciate that same sort of approach HBO had to
making entertainment in English speaking countries or Spanish speaking ones.
Now this was still in the United States. HBO has
not branched out into other countries as of yet so
this was for Spanish speaking populations within the US, which
you know, stirred up some cultural issues in certain markets
(02:44):
with people who might not be as um progressive in
some ways. Let's to be really diplomatic about it, but
at any rate, it was a bold move and it
paid off. And then HBO helped roll out another channel.
They were behind the development of the Comedy Channel. So
(03:05):
their idea was to create a special channel specifically catering
to comedy. They had seen successes in other fields, right,
and their and their comedy specials for doing so well. Yeah,
so they're thinking, wait, we know comedy, we know comedy.
We we are the people who give comedians that that
that cashe of. I've got an HBO special, I've made
(03:27):
it in the business. So so let's let's let's capitalize
on that. Let's take clips from the specials and for
movies and just toss them up on the air, and
and let's not provide context for them, because that would
be too complicated. Let's just let's just like clip the
jokes out of their context and they're going to be
just as funny standing on their own as they would
(03:47):
be within the UH. Incorporation of whatever set up there
was around that joke, right. You know, actually this sounds
a lot like YouTube. This was forward thinking, this was
ahead of its time. Yeah. See that they were trying
to follow the model of MTV. You know, they wanted
to do what MTV did with music videos, they wanted
to do with comedy clips. But it failed pretty wildly.
(04:08):
Yeah see, it just just was one of those things
where unless you had that extra context, you couldn't truly
appreciate the joke for what it was. You might find
it amusing, but you wouldn't necessarily find it hilarious. Right. Um. Meanwhile,
Viacom launched a rival channel named HA with an exclamation
point to nontheless, which was even worse than than the
Comedy Channel. However, they merged these two terrible things together
(04:32):
to create the Comedy Network, which eventually became Comedy Central.
As we all know, I love right and so h
It's interesting to me because one of the things that
did happen that helped differentiate the Comedy Channel from HAW.
I didn't put this in our notes, but the Comedy
Channel was the channel that started carrying a certain mystery
science theater three thousand uh and in fact, I remember that.
(04:55):
If you've ever read any of the MST three K histories,
they talk about how whenever they told people were on
the comedy channel, the response was, oh, you mean ha
oh no, no, no, the other the other comedy that's
called Yeah. So there was some confusion in the marketplace
until those two finally kind of merged into its own unit.
(05:15):
But was also when a certain HBO original series premiered,
one that had a lasting impression on my childhood me
as well, Tales from the Crypt YEP with the crypt Keeper.
So this was HBO's second attempt at making a horror
anthology series. Yeah. The first one was The Hitchhiker, which
nobody cares about. Yeah, I mean I watched it that
(05:37):
as a kid too. I mean I grew up during
this era, So I watched The Hitchhiker. But Tales from
the Crypt was I mean, I just I just want
to give the crypt Keeper a hug. The only thing
I have to say about Tells from the Crypt is, uh.
It really is unfortunate that their very best episode was
also the first episode. It was all downhill after that.
The Man Who Was Death phenomenal episode about a crazy
(05:59):
uh executioner who really loses his marbles when the state
he's working in outlaws Capital punishment. Great episode, great music
for that episode. Not particularly scary, but really well done.
Um and sadly, I do not believe any of the
subsequent episodes quite lived up to it, even the one
that had Tim Curry starring as like four different characters
(06:22):
in the single episode. I watched this a lot. Also
saw the premiere of the series dream On, which was,
you know, a comedy series following a a a divorced
guy who was trying to kind of find his place
and find love, and interesting that the show itself was
(06:43):
was pretty amusing. Often it had raunchy situations, a lot
of gratuitous nudity, both in Tales from the Crypt and
dream On, partially because they could get away with it,
like this is HBO, so they're not they're not the
same standards as over the air TV SO and especially
the air later on at night. They're not going to
get that many complaints from parent groups, right, So this
(07:04):
was one of those things where because they were able
to do it, they were encouraged to do it, even
if that wasn't in their plan when they were making
next at a show pitch that ended up being kind
of a directive handed down saying, look, guys, throw in
some nudity and some violence in there, because because why not. Well,
I mean, that's also part of the point of Tales
(07:25):
from the Crypt I think from the beginning is that
it was very much one of those old schlock h
B movie kind of throwbacks. Well yeah, and very much
like The Twilight Zone, the sort of idea of the
karma coming back and haunting you, because it was usually
about really awful people doing really awful things and then
having really awful things happened to them as a consequence.
Sometimes it was not such an awful person and really
(07:45):
awful things would happen to them, but it was a
general general rule, whereas with dream On it was like
lots of cringe humor and and some other stuff. There's
some great moments and that I remember when David Bowie
showed up and he was phenomenal on dream On. See.
I watched a lot of HBO when I was a kid.
HBO rolls out HBO two, which was later named HBO Plus.
(08:08):
So HBO two is a complementary platform essentially has the
same sort of stuff that HBO has, but a different
schedule made possible by this signal compression, which allows you
to put multiple channels on a single transmission line. This
was a big deal because cable operators didn't want to
yield up channels multiple channels to one provider, all right,
They only had so much bandwidth to to to provide
(08:31):
and so therefore if you only, for example, have have
forty spots to put stuff in, uh, you know, having
giving one channel two spots is a big deal, right,
exactly when you could be increasing the variety that you're
offering your potential customers, right, sure, and especially at the time,
I want to mention, everyone did not have like seven channels, right,
(08:52):
That's what signal compression made possible, because you could actually
put multiple channels across one transmission line by compressing the
signal of each one in multiplexing them. So with HBO,
that meant that they could eventually start creating uh, targeted
hbos that would be marketed more towards a specific audience.
So you might have one that has more action movies,
(09:13):
for example, and one with more comedy content or one
with more kid friendly stuff. I mean once again, like
this gave them the option of doing that without having
to put in as big an investment as something like
Festival or Take two was. Back in the other episodes
you heard us talk about those failed attempts at making
this kind of approach, but now the technology existed for
(09:35):
them to do it. Also in HBO finally broke into Europe.
Not physically, not like you know, illegally, they actually made
a foothold in Europe in Hungary. They had the Hungarian
cable system called Cable Calm. That's with Kay's for both
the cable and the calm, and that was partly backed
(09:55):
by Time Warner. So this system again did not use
satellite system that was common in the United States. They
didn't worry about getting a geostationary satellite in orbit above Hungary.
They instead made microwave transmission towers to get the signal
out to cable uper returning to that older technology, which
(10:16):
I mean was was less expensive. Overall, it was considered
too expensive to to put up a satellite for all
of Europe when you've got so many languages in such
a small area to work with, right, it was not
a practical approach in the case of Europe. I mean,
if if everyone in Europe spoke the same language, then
it would be a different story. But with all the
different languages and cultures, it meant that HBO had very
(10:37):
different products for each country that it started to get into.
In fact, that's a story that happens over and over.
It's repeated over and over in HBO's history, where they
would tailor make the experience for whatever market they were
going into. But that meant the microwave transmission approach made
way more sense than satellite. So they start over there,
(10:58):
over in Europe, and then they start creeping into some
other markets, about fifteen more European markets eventually. Meanwhile, that
year they also launched in Central and South America. YEP.
Much easier to do, as it turns out, because Central
and South America, with the exception of Brazil, share a
common language for the most part, so they had Spanish
(11:19):
speaking language channels that just broadcast by satellite over South
America and Central America. How the new channel was called
HBO ol A. I'm surprised they didn't go with HBoL A. Honestly,
don't look at me. I'm not the one who named it.
I'm just saying I'm surprised they didn't. They didn't do
it that way. Um. Yeah, it was available in countries
(11:42):
in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. I I
don't know how I feel about this HBO ol a thing.
I guess probably other folks aren't upset by it. It
just seems a little culturally insensible to me. But anyway,
HBO gets a coup with The Larry Sanders Show starring
Gary Schandling, and you might say, well, how is that
(12:04):
a coup? Well, Gary Schandling had really made a big
success in the eighties and early nineties with another show
called It's Gary Shandling Show, which was a send up
of sitcoms, and that aired on a different station, on Showtime,
so direct competitor to HBO. Yeah, so Gary Schandling gets
gets uh notoriety through Showtime and the It's Gary Shandling Show,
(12:27):
which by the way, I thought was hilarious, and then
moves over to HBO for what you could argue was
an even better show. The Larry Sanders Show was more
of a send up of late night television talk shows
like things like The Tonight Show or uh late night
type shows, those kind of things, with the character of
(12:49):
Larry Sanders played by Gary Schandling as this very vain,
very petty host And it was supposed to show you
kind of the backstage stuff that happens on these shows
where on on camera everyone's really friendly and interested in
each other, you know, the host has to be engaged
with the guest, but then when the cameras go off,
(13:11):
they become nasty, petty, terrible people. Uh. And it was
a pretty amusing show. This is also the year when
HBO launched another series called Real Sex, which was a
magazine format show about sexual matters and had a very frank,
open minded approach. They it was a little bit documentary
and style and um, they covered some pretty like some
(13:32):
things that could have easily been sensationalized or trivialized or
or or portrayed in such a way as to say,
aren't these people unusual? But but for the most part
it was. It was pretty welcoming of the unusual, which
was which was really nice. Actually, I mean, and I'm
not saying that it wasn't. I mean, you know, they
were putting it on the air. I think largely because
(13:52):
sex exactly some reason why they had so many so
much gratuitous nudity on dream on you know. But but
at the same time, the uh Michael folks, you know,
the CEO of of HBO said, look, this series is
what's giving us the money to fund all the documentaries
that you guys love, and we're trying to deal with
(14:14):
this frank subject matter in a way that's respectful, which
could have easily gone a different way. So yeah, Also, uh,
the HBO expands yet again. See now they're entering into
a new era of expansion where they're getting new customers.
They're not able to invent new customers in the United States. Uh,
you know, people do that on their own, but they're
not able to create a new market. So what they
(14:36):
did was they started to expand in other parts of
the world. So in the launched HBO Asia, which initially
service the Philippines and Thailand, but eventually through multiplexing, the
service would be available in uh several Asian languages and
spread to twenty three nations. I think Mandarin Chinese was
probably their biggest uh bet on that one. I would
(15:00):
imagine enormous population in China. Oh yes. Uh. Then in
HBO l A yeah, God, that's cringe. Where they know
they launched a second channel in Center in South America
as well as a Portuguese language channel in Brazil, so
once again expanding in other markets, and Michael Folks gets
(15:22):
promoted to overseeing all of Warner Music, and Jeff Bukes,
who we mentioned in the previous episode, steps up as
the new head of HBO, and in we get the
premiere of one of I would say a predecessor to
the really big breakout hits of HBO original program. It
was the first hour long drama series produced for HBO,
(15:44):
and that was Oz Yes, which of course was the
drama series about a maximum security prison and the shenanigans
they go on inside. Shenanigans is maybe a shanking, let's
let's have uh Yeah, And I never watched the series myself,
but but I've heard many colorful things about it. Yeah,
it was um, it was rough. It was a rough series.
(16:06):
But again, it was one of those things that HBO
did because one they knew there was going to be
a market for it, and to no one else could
really do it. They didn't have the money for it,
and they couldn't do it on broadcast television, basic cable.
So uh, that ended up getting some notice, but it
wasn't a breakaway hit. Yet HBO produces a mini series
(16:27):
called From From the Earth to the Moon, which was
a big budget mini series. It was produced by Tom
Hanks and Ron Howard. Tom Hanks did not star in it,
he was just a producer behind the camera. Mostly starred
actors who were not recognizable to most of the audience,
and that was on purpose. It was to be able
to put the focus on the drama of the story
(16:47):
and to recreate the time of the story without distracting
by saying, Oh, it's such and such from so and so.
Also to lower the costs a little bit, I imagine
probably also a factor. So this particular model would up
serving as an example for future mini series that HBO
would produce, including things like Band of Brothers or John Adams.
(17:07):
There was another one called Generation Kill, which probably is
not as well known as those two, but other ones
as well. So this was an approach to producing mini
series which HBO had not really done. It tried a
couple in the early eighties, but in general had stayed
away from mini series and had only been producing open
ended series where run it season after season until you
(17:28):
get tired and you stopped doing it. UH one one
of those that that happened that began with Sex in
the City at debut that year, and and as we
all know, became a pretty wildly successful spawned two films.
I mean, it was a big, big hit. Lots of
people either loved it or hated it, or loved to
hate it that love to hate it. I never ever
(17:51):
watched it. My knowledge of sex Sex in the City
was based solely upon other people's conversations, and just like
was aware of it culturally, but I never watched the show.
And uh, I got the feeling that I probably it's
probably I'm not the right audience for that particular. I'm
not sure either. I a fellow that I dated loved
(18:12):
it and and maybe watch the entire thing, so I
hear past tense, delightful fellow, Okay, alright, fair, fair enough,
all right. Well, anyway, Sex in the City, uh, Sex
and the City, I should say, ends up being one
the first of the big three uh breakaway hits of
(18:32):
HBO originals. We've got a lot more to say about HBO,
but before we can do that, let's take a quick break.
All right. It's ninete, It's the year after Sex in
the City debuts and gives HBO it's first real incredible
(18:55):
popular ship. Yebo ends up debuting another original series that
kind of sets the tone for what HBO original programming
is all about, at least for several series that followed
behind The Sopranos, obviously one of the most important series
in HBO history, not only that, but in cable history,
(19:15):
because The Sopranos was critically acclaimed. It was not just successful,
the critics loved it, and it would win Emmy's in
two thousand four and two thousand seven. It was nominated
for Emmy's every single year that it was eligible to
do so, because remember The Sopranos was one of those
shows that would go on a hiatus for more than
a year, but it would garner more than it would
(19:35):
garner a hundred and eleven nominations over the span of
its life. So this was a cable show winning an Emmy.
Now that's a big deal because for a while, cable
television was looked down on, like it was looked at
something that was always pretending to be as good as
broadcast TV. And so the Emmys were for broadcast television.
(19:56):
That's where the quality programming was and and Furthermore, something
that might be h c D or or a little
bit patronizing. Um, but yeah, but with with something is
as hard hitting and dramatic and beautiful as the Sopranos.
It was a hit. Yeah, So we started to see
cable shows being taken seriously. They no longer needed to
have their own little UH Awards ceremony. The ACE Cable
(20:18):
Awards were around back in the day where because they
weren't really eligible for the Emmys, they were only eligible
for for ACE Cable nominations. The Sopranos definitely knocked that
door wide open by consistently being one of the most
nominated shows while it was on the air. So it
really did change the entertainment industry. It's yet another reason
why we talked so much about HBO, because again, I
(20:42):
had this huge effect on how things happened following. You know,
the stuff that HBO would try, whether it was successful
or not, it would end up impacting the rest of
the industry and other industries as well. So then in
two thousand we get the third of the Big Three.
We've already got Sex in the City, We've already got
the Sopranos, So what comes next? Six under Yeah, this
(21:03):
was a show about two brothers who inherit their father's
funeral service business after their father passes away. And it
was a weird series. It's one of those series that's
really difficult to describe to someone who's never seen it,
because there were episodes where there's stuff that happened that
was pretty funny, there was stuff that happened that was
really tragic. There was stuff that happened where you felt
(21:24):
like there would be no scenery left unchewed. I mean
it was you couldn't easily the whole range. Yeah, So
it was one of those that ended up again being
wildly successful. So that's why you've got the Big three.
And OZ was not part of the Big three because
even though it was fairly popular and fairly well critically acclaimed,
it never reached that same level of popularity as the
(21:47):
other the other three. I think it was a little
bit less palatable to a very large market. Yeah. Yeah,
there's another big show we'll be talking about briefly that
had a similar issue that it appealed to one particular
market really really well and other markets not so well.
So two thousand two we have Jeff Bukes getting promoted
to president and chief operating officer of Time Warner. So
(22:09):
now he has left HBO and joined the you know,
the not left it, but he's now the head of
the parent company. And so Chris Albrecht takes Bukes's place
as head of HBO, and all Breck would end up
struggling a bit. He was very big on taking chances,
and he launched a lot of different programs on HBO,
but he was really trying to aim to to continue
(22:31):
this momentum of the Big Three, to make another series
that was just as impactful and compelling as those, and
as it turns out, that's really hard to do. Sometimes
you're just lucky, you know, you just strike on the
right formula that just happens to resonate with the audience. Uh.
And so even though they produced a lot of different shows,
(22:51):
and many of them were really good ones, they didn't
really hit the popularity of the Big Three, and so
HBO was kind of kind of floundering a little bit,
you know, trying lots of different stuff and occasionally launching
something really ambitious and then pulling the plug when realizing
that okay, this is this isn't that it wasn't making
them as much money as they thought it would have been.
(23:11):
In two thousand three, a show like that launched. It
was called Carnival, which I personally love so much. It's
really important. It's got the Kurgan in it, so I mean,
you can't really go wrong. Oh yeah, yeah, the Kurgan
as as of course his philosophy. We should all remember
it's better to burn out the feet away. Thank you,
thank you for that. Uh. And so it had excellent
(23:32):
critical reception. It it got five Emmy's among fifteen nominations
over the two seasons that it was on the air,
which is pretty incredible. Um. But it was also costing
the company two million dollars per episode, and um yeah,
it's the first in this whole range of series that
HBO would start pursuing. Um. But also that year, Time
(23:53):
Warners sold its stake in Comedy Central to Viacom for
one point to three billion dollars. So now Time War
is out of the comedy biz as far as Comedy
Central is concerned. But is still, of course, HBO is
still very much known for its comedy specials. And then
in two thousand and four we get an amazing comedy Deadwood,
a silly little show about cowboys. Deadwood was plenty funny. Um, yeah,
(24:18):
I guess if you found, uh, if you found if
you found the multiple uses of certain incredibly blue phrases
to be amusing, I did. Yeah. Well, no, I can't
blame you. I've only ever seen two episodes and they
weren't connected to each other, but they were both fascinating.
So it's one of those things where I really wish
I had been able to watch the whole series and
just stick around, folks, because I'm about to get excited
(24:39):
towards the end of this podcast. But yeah, So it's
it's a Shakespearean Western. The language was very much inspired
by Shakespeare. Now I'm a Shakespearean scholar so and I
love Westerns, so both of these things appealed to me.
But it's absolutely filthy. Shakespearean Shakespeare's absolutely filthy. Just that's true.
That where the words don't mean the same thing anymore,
(24:59):
that's air. So yeah. Then they also launched in two
thousand four Entourage, which was a show about making fun
of the Hollywood lifestyle and trying to break into Hollywood,
uh and and being a hanger on to someone who
has met with some meager success Uh, it has fewer
foul mouth cowboys in it. But Albert really struggled to
get another big hit like The Sopranos, and most of
(25:21):
the shows that he produced were either critically acclaimed but
sparsely watched, or they were just outright panned. So a
couple of the ones that didn't do well at all
were with titles like K Street and Unscripted, and that's
two series that most people don't talk about anymore. Then
there was also Louis c Kay's Lucky Louis sitcom, which
didn't do very well either. Uh. Of course would pave
(25:44):
the way for the actual series Louis, which is not
on HBO, But the this earlier attempt was not a success. Now,
Deadwood lasted three seasons and then was very quietly killed
off because HBO didn't want to make a big deal
out of ending Deadwood. I mean, their their whole like
corporate identity was that we produce shows that other people
(26:08):
cannot or will not do. We have that money, we
have that flexibility, we have the customers who want it,
so we're gonna do it well. And then they realized, oh,
we might not actually have that much money. Yeah, Deadwood
as it turns out another very expensive, changing the period
costume drama with really big actors and yeah, really big actors,
(26:29):
really really expensive set pieces, and I mean it was
a very ambitious show that cost a lot of money. Meanwhile,
they also had The Wire, which had an even smaller
audience than Deadwood did, but the Wire was less expensive
to produce and was also critically acclaimed. Yeah it was.
It was still very much critically acclaimed. So if you've
got two series and you've got one that's really expensive
(26:51):
and it's critically acclaimed, but only seems to be attracting
mostly a male audience because men tend to like Westerns
and women tend not to. Those are just general trends,
obviously not descriptive of everyone everywhere. So don't write me
and tell me how you are a woman who loves
Westerns and that I'm wrong. I actually wonder how the
(27:12):
numbers on dead Wood chok out. Now I need to
research this well. At any rate, they weren't good enough
for HBO, so they wanted to very quietly kind of
back off. And they had originally said that they were
thinking about doing four seasons, they actually only did three. Um,
they said that they were going to do two movies
to follow up and tie up all the loose ends,
which never never have happened. They haven't surfaced, so pretty
(27:36):
sure that that ship has sailed to mix some cowboy,
pirate and metaphors. But but The Wire they kept going
because it was critically claimed and cheap. Yeah, so this
way they got the benefit of having a critically acclaimed
television show on their network, but it wasn't a huge
financial loss to the company. It was and to be fair,
involved fewer contrasting plaids, which I know not everybody a
(27:59):
prey dates to the level that I do. You obviously
haven't watched The Wire season two. Contrasting Plaids was the
subtitle of that season. I just made all that up.
But yeah, so so that's you know, they wanted to
have the benefit of having this kind of critically acclaimed
programming on their channel, but obviously not have the albatross
of an incredibly expensive production around the corporate neck. Yeah,
(28:22):
which is why in two thousand five they started realm Okay,
so clearly they did not. Maybe they learned from their
mistakes and that's how they were able to repeat them
almost exactly well, I think that they learned to those
I think that they made those mistakes after Rome had
already premiered, that they were still and that excited, let's
do everything we want to do phase with Rome. But
it was also very expensive, hard to get viewers into it.
(28:45):
They did, they canceled it after two seasons. Now, of course,
originally they had talked about just being a mini series
where it would have only have been uh, something like
twelve episodes, but then they said that there would come
back for a second season, and sometime in that second
season they're like, whoops, okay, let's just let this quietly
die too. And there's only so many times you can
watch someone fall out of a toga. I guess. Yeah.
(29:06):
By the way, still in that era of hey, we
can get away with it because we're on we're a
paid television station, so let's create content. There's lots of
gratuitous violence and or nudity. Rome had plenty of both.
All right, home stretch for this part of HBO's history.
Before we can get to that, let's take another quake
(29:27):
break two thousand seven. In November of two thousand seven,
a major event happened that affected all all television channels. Everywhere,
because at least in the United States, well, all television
channels that were producing original content. Yeah, because that's when
(29:50):
the Writer's Guild of America had a strike. Now, yeah,
animation was fine because they weren't in the Writer's Guild.
I knew a lot of animators who were grumbling a
about this. But, uh, the Writer's Guild of America had
a strike, and so HBO had banked a lot of
stuff that helped them kind of coast through the writer's
strike without too much trouble. They had the mini series
(30:12):
John Adams that helped them get through it. They had
another season of The Wire that helped him get through it.
But HBO did not get through two thousand and seven
without some major trouble. For example, Chris Albrecht, the head
of HBO, was arrested following a physical altercation. It was
actually he was arrested because he uh physically threatened his
girlfriend at the time. Yeah, and that's not good. And
(30:35):
apparently it wasn't his first offense either. Yeah, and time
Warner called for his resignation. Actually, I read the letter
he wrote Albrecht wrote where he was very frank and
admitted guilt and said I thought I had put these
problems behind me. I was. I was an alcoholic. I
went to alcoholics Anonymous two years ago. I thought, you know,
I can handle drinking alcohol. And clearly I was wrong.
(30:56):
So he was very much admitting his fault in it.
So at least there's that. I mean, it's still a terrible,
terrible thing. But um, he didn't deny it, so I
guess that's something. So Time Warner now is saying, all right, well,
what are we going to do with HBO? Who's gonna
lead it? There was not a specific person that they
could point to and say, this is the person upon
(31:17):
whose whose shoulders HBO should rest. So they ended up
picking three people to kind of divide up the the
entire job of ruling this kingdom all of whom had
been working for HBO since the nine Yep, you had
Bill Nelson who became the CEO of HBO, Eric Kessler
became one of the co presidents, and the other was
(31:38):
Richard Plepler. And yeah, they all had experience. Richard Plepler
did not have any experience in programming going into it,
but would turn out to have some very keen ideas
on where to go. Because remember this is still when
HBO is trying to recapture the glory of the Big
Three and try and find another another original series that
they can they can really be proud of, and they
(31:59):
can that can care area the company. So around the
same time, in two thousand seven, little upstart company called Netflix,
which had been in business for a few years, announced
that it was going to create a streaming service, an
online streaming service. All right, they had already been offering
DVDs via mail, but at this point they started offering streaming. Yep. So, uh,
this becomes another competitor to HBO because HBO now they
(32:23):
still have as part of their business this idea of uncensored,
uncut movies that you can watch but with Netflix streaming,
and we can watched them whenever you want. Yeah, assuming
assuming that the title is in their library, which we
all know is a huge assumption. And and and furthermore,
they obviously at that time, we're not making their own
original content. Yeah. Yeah, Netflix was pretty much beholden to
(32:47):
whatever uh studios were producing content at that time. But yeah,
this was another another competitor, and it was outside the
cable industry. Everyone got a little nervous at this point.
Including HBO. Oh sure. Speaking of that original content. However,
in two thousand eight, HBO debut True Blood, um, which
was really its first, its first big hit since those
(33:09):
Big three. Yeah yeah, this one was a huge hit.
It was extremely popular. You can debate upon whether or
not it merits that. I know there are such debates.
I've never watched the series, so I can't comment one
way the other. It's terrible. I love it, yeah, okay,
I mean terrible things have their place in this world. Uh.
Then other shows such as Boardwalk, Empire, The News Room,
(33:30):
and Veep followed. So these were shows that didn't necessarily
have the same following as the Big three, but again,
we're critically acclaimed, seemed to be popular among the audiences
that really love these shows. Um. And then you started
seeing a couple of major breakthrough hits that that followed
so three Yeah yeah, stuff like Girls and Game of Thrones.
(33:51):
Do I can't do anymore because they'll they'll take us down. Yeah. No,
Game of Thrones, big big hit obviously or HBO. UM.
I don't have HBO. By the way, this is where
I mentioned I don't own HBO, but I read all
the books, so you can't spoil me, suckers. Yeah, you
can tell me about stuff that happened in the show
(34:12):
but didn't happen the books. But here's the thing, I
don't care because I read the books, so to me,
that's the story. So bring it, is what I'm saying,
unless your name is George RR. Martin, in which case,
do not bring it, sir. I will be happy to
read it when you publish it, and take your time.
Take your time, sir, as long as you need. Yeah, no, no, no, no.
As as Neil Gaman once said, George R. Martin is
not your bitch. Yeah. And then Paul and Storm sang
(34:35):
a song, and then George RR. Martin came out and
broke their their guitars. It's a great, great moment on YouTube.
Look it up. For For the record, I've also read
the books. You cannot spoil me either. Yes, that's a
challenge unless you're George R. Martin. Two. Yeah, I don't.
I don't want him writing in and say guess which
Stark dies next? Want it? I totally want him to
do that. Actually, oh, come on, it would be the best. Well,
(34:56):
then we can hold it over everyone else is George R. Martin.
If you're listening, please right, it's spoiled me, spoil Lauren.
We'd have to give them just your email address and
the one that I give out of the end it
goes to both of us. Lauren, this is this is
irresponsible of you. All right, Just send her a direct tweet, Okay.
So in two thousand, HBO launches hbo Go, which is
its online streaming service for HBO subscribers, which allow HBO
(35:20):
customers to watch content on demand for the first time,
only three years after Netflix had already been doing the
same thing. And of course it's limited to just people
who will Theoretically, it's limited to just people who have
an HBO subscription. So if you do not subscribe to
cable and subscribe to HBO, you cannot access hbo Go legally.
(35:43):
I say legally because it is my understanding and again
I do not do. This is my understanding that some
people occasionally will lend out their logins to friends or
family who do not have HBO so that they can
watch things. In fact, that'll tie into something we're gonna
talk about just a moment. Now we're we're finally up
to current day. So here's the thing we don't have
(36:05):
to take the way back machine back to present day
because we are in present day now. So the way
back machine. Yeah, now, granted we have been traveling through
time for three episodes and it's gotten a little warm
in this room. Yeah, because that's the problem with being
in this way back machine. It's like a quarter of
the size of our studio. So it's been a little,
been a little Let's just go ahead and step out
(36:26):
right now. Okay, that's better. Yeah, that's way better. All right,
So we're in present day now. First of all, Uh,
Game of Thrones, that that series we mentioned just a
couple of points ago before we got off on our
George R. Martin please spoil us rand Uh. It's turned
out to be the most pirated show in the world.
(36:48):
Almost more people illegally downloaded the Game of Thrones premiere
for season four then the next closest rival, which was
The Walking Dead, so almost more people's That shows that
the show is incredibly popular, and in fact, in April tween,
(37:08):
Game of Thrones broke the record for most pirated episode
within the first twenty four hours of going live, with
one point one seven million unique IP addresses torrenting the
premiere of season four, So that doesn't count all the
people who used uh, someone else's HBO go profile. Okay,
but but but I but I want to say here,
(37:30):
it's drawing some seventeen million legit viewers per episode. Well
legit or legit ish um, you know, you know, again,
not not counting people who are stealing that password. Um.
But the thing is is that HBO officially does not
care about that thing. CEO Richard Pepler has said, uh,
and I quote it's a terrific marketing vehicle for the
(37:51):
next generation of viewers and also quote, we're in the
business of creating addicts. They've actually noticed that people have
subscribe to HBO after pirating stuff because they wanted to
have access to this and I didn't want the problems
of either using someone else's HBO Go pass, which might crash,
because that's happened a couple of times. That happened. On
(38:12):
the premiere of season four, too many people were trying
to access the HBO Go network and as a result,
it crashed under the demand, which caused a lot of
people to complain. I maintained that the people complaining we're
borrowing someone else's HBO Go pass. I think that's probably
an accurate I haven't done any research on this. This
is based upon the people I saw on Twitter complaining.
(38:33):
I'm like, you don't subscribe to HBO. You're using someone
else's pass, and you're complaining that doesn't work entitled much anyway,
in the business of creating addicts, it's apparently it works
really well. So, yeah, it seems like it's going pretty well. See,
I guess I see some figures here you've got in
(38:53):
this in this notes here, Lauren. Yeah, they're they're doing
pretty okay. They're they're operating at a profit margin of
the some one point three billion dollars they rake in
every year. UM. They currently have some a hundred and
thirty million subscribers worldwide, and and HBO that their subscription
base is growing faster than it has in the past
seventeen years. To be fair, Netflix is growing even faster
(39:17):
still and has surpassed HBO in the number of subscribers
it did so back in Q three UM. But Netflix
is operating costs are a whole lot higher, being that
it's still busy building its original content and investing in
all of those new markets. And HBO recently made a
partnership with a direct competitor to Netflix that could really
(39:39):
shake things up. We're talking about Amazon Prime. Yeah, yeah,
they they announced a deal where Amazon is going to
get to stream a bunch of HBOS original content. Um,
not all of it. I think that Game Thrones in
Sex and the City were both left out of the deal.
Game of Thrones specifically, not surprising anyone has left out
of the deal. Yeah, but a lot of their older content,
(40:01):
in particular things like The Sopranos and say Deadwood, will
be allowed to stream on Amazon Prime. So that has
me really excited because now I'll finally get to watch
both those shows. I am not seen them so to me.
I mean, granted, I know a lot about what happens
in them, it's just culturally you do share share, But
but that's not that's not really the point. Now. The
performances and the execution, uh and literal senses in both
(40:26):
in both those shows are what will be really interesting
to me because I've always heard so much about them.
Now I hope that I'm able to go in with
with managed expectations and not just you know, super hyped,
because obviously very few things live up to a super
hyped expectations, but I'm looking forward to seeing them. But honestly,
Deadwood lived up to the hype for me, I'm I'm
looking forward to seeing it from the beginning because, like
(40:47):
I said, I only saw two episodes completely out of context,
and that was that was troubling under each listeners, these
these shows are for mature audiences only or immature way
does that let let me out immature mature audiences? Yeah?
So uh so, so, so don't go. Don't don't go
running out and watching this parents, that would be you know,
(41:10):
don't don't be like Jonathan was watching Tales from the
Crypt when he was a little kid. Clearly no damage
was done to either of us. We turned out completely normal. Um.
But at any rate, now, this this entire Amazon deal,
especially with Amazon expanding its empire to include that new
fire TV gig, that that dollar Internet to TV device
(41:31):
streaming thing, um, could potentially mean a bit of a
crunch for Netflix. Yeah yeah, I mean this is this
is the next era, right, So I'm sure Netflix's response
will be to go and invest even more in original programming,
because again, you have to differentiate yourself. Um. They you know,
they've had some very famous issues with keeping films in
their libraries and licensing licenses expiring. People get upset about that.
(41:56):
The funny thing is that's the way it's worked ever
since this whole pay TV model even started. I mean
HBO had the same issues, which they would have a
movie under license and then the license expires and they
don't have access to that film anymore. That's why you're
not going to see Star Wars all the time. It's
only whenever the license comes up and they're allowed to
show them. Also, as we said in our streaming content episodes,
(42:19):
Netflix's game plan right now is too and and I
think this was the quote, become HBO before HBO can
become us. Ye, So so the race is on. Both
both of them are are racing out the gates, and uh,
we don't know. Maybe they'll maybe they'll be a photo finish,
Maybe we'll have two amazing content providers that we all enjoy,
(42:40):
Maybe one will come out on top. We'll have to
wait and see. But yeah, it's been great getting a
chance to talk about HBO. And we know that we
really went super in depth with this one, and that's
not normally what we do with our episodes, but in
this case, because it had such an impact on the
way cable television works today and the reason we even
have cable in our our cities. We felt that it
(43:01):
merited this kind of discussion and that wraps up the
HBO story as a May fourteen. Like I've said multiple times,
I'll probably have to go back do an update talk
about what's happened since then. Um, but yeah, if there
are any topics that you would like me to cover
in the future, whether it's a company, trend in tech,
(43:23):
a specific technology and how it works, or you know,
anything along those lines that is related to technology, let
me know you can do that. As I said over
on Twitter, the handle we uses tech stuff h s
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
(43:44):
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Johan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and love all Things Tech. And we are in another
classic episode, folks. This episode originally published May twelve, two
(00:25):
thousand fourteen. It is the third part of our HBO story,
the conclusion at that point of the HBO Story. Obviously, again,
a lot of stuff has happened since then, so at
some point I will need to do a big update.
In fact, if you think that that's a good idea,
let me know on Twitter. I usually save this for
the end, but on Twitter we use the handle tech
(00:47):
Stuff hs W, So if you ever have a suggestion,
send it my way through there. But now let's go
back and listen to this classic episode the HBO Story,
Part three. So July to nine, Time Incorporated acquires a
fifty nine point three percent steak and a little company
called Warner Communications Incorporated's creating Time Warner Incorporated the largest
(01:13):
media and entertainment company in the world, and the following year,
Time Incorporate would acquire the remainder of Warner Communications, making
it a fully integrated company, So now it's even larger
media giant. HBO is still a big player in that
enormous corporation, And that same year HBO would launch HBOS
(01:36):
lesion Is and Espanol, later renamed HBO Espanol and then
later renamed HBO Latino. So you may have guessed. This
is a channel that offered in parallel with HBO for
certain Spanish speaking markets about twenty initially, and took advantage
of something called the secondary Audio program or s a
P to replace the English speaking track with a span
(01:59):
of speaking one. And it was a big success, so
much so that other markets began to add this to
their service, and so much so that eventually they would
start producing their own original content for those markets. Right,
so instead of just say, taking an HBO original that
was done in English and redubbing it, they actually made
their own award winning HBO originals. So you could, if
(02:22):
you were a Spanish speaking person, watch these and and
really appreciate that same sort of approach HBO had to
making entertainment in English speaking countries or Spanish speaking ones.
Now this was still in the United States. HBO has
not branched out into other countries as of yet so
this was for Spanish speaking populations within the US, which
you know, stirred up some cultural issues in certain markets
(02:44):
with people who might not be as um progressive in
some ways. Let's to be really diplomatic about it, but
at any rate, it was a bold move and it
paid off. And then HBO helped roll out another channel.
They were behind the development of the Comedy Channel. So
(03:05):
their idea was to create a special channel specifically catering
to comedy. They had seen successes in other fields, right,
and their and their comedy specials for doing so well. Yeah,
so they're thinking, wait, we know comedy, we know comedy.
We we are the people who give comedians that that
that cashe of. I've got an HBO special, I've made
(03:27):
it in the business. So so let's let's let's capitalize
on that. Let's take clips from the specials and for
movies and just toss them up on the air, and
and let's not provide context for them, because that would
be too complicated. Let's just let's just like clip the
jokes out of their context and they're going to be
just as funny standing on their own as they would
(03:47):
be within the UH. Incorporation of whatever set up there
was around that joke, right. You know, actually this sounds
a lot like YouTube. This was forward thinking, this was
ahead of its time. Yeah. See that they were trying
to follow the model of MTV. You know, they wanted
to do what MTV did with music videos, they wanted
to do with comedy clips. But it failed pretty wildly.
(04:08):
Yeah see, it just just was one of those things
where unless you had that extra context, you couldn't truly
appreciate the joke for what it was. You might find
it amusing, but you wouldn't necessarily find it hilarious. Right. Um. Meanwhile,
Viacom launched a rival channel named HA with an exclamation
point to nontheless, which was even worse than than the
Comedy Channel. However, they merged these two terrible things together
(04:32):
to create the Comedy Network, which eventually became Comedy Central.
As we all know, I love right and so h
It's interesting to me because one of the things that
did happen that helped differentiate the Comedy Channel from HAW.
I didn't put this in our notes, but the Comedy
Channel was the channel that started carrying a certain mystery
science theater three thousand uh and in fact, I remember that.
(04:55):
If you've ever read any of the MST three K histories,
they talk about how whenever they told people were on
the comedy channel, the response was, oh, you mean ha
oh no, no, no, the other the other comedy that's
called Yeah. So there was some confusion in the marketplace
until those two finally kind of merged into its own unit.
(05:15):
But was also when a certain HBO original series premiered,
one that had a lasting impression on my childhood me
as well, Tales from the Crypt YEP with the crypt Keeper.
So this was HBO's second attempt at making a horror
anthology series. Yeah. The first one was The Hitchhiker, which
nobody cares about. Yeah, I mean I watched it that
(05:37):
as a kid too. I mean I grew up during
this era, So I watched The Hitchhiker. But Tales from
the Crypt was I mean, I just I just want
to give the crypt Keeper a hug. The only thing
I have to say about Tells from the Crypt is, uh.
It really is unfortunate that their very best episode was
also the first episode. It was all downhill after that.
The Man Who Was Death phenomenal episode about a crazy
(05:59):
uh executioner who really loses his marbles when the state
he's working in outlaws Capital punishment. Great episode, great music
for that episode. Not particularly scary, but really well done.
Um and sadly, I do not believe any of the
subsequent episodes quite lived up to it, even the one
that had Tim Curry starring as like four different characters
(06:22):
in the single episode. I watched this a lot. Also
saw the premiere of the series dream On, which was,
you know, a comedy series following a a a divorced
guy who was trying to kind of find his place
and find love, and interesting that the show itself was
(06:43):
was pretty amusing. Often it had raunchy situations, a lot
of gratuitous nudity, both in Tales from the Crypt and
dream On, partially because they could get away with it,
like this is HBO, so they're not they're not the
same standards as over the air TV SO and especially
the air later on at night. They're not going to
get that many complaints from parent groups, right, So this
(07:04):
was one of those things where because they were able
to do it, they were encouraged to do it, even
if that wasn't in their plan when they were making
next at a show pitch that ended up being kind
of a directive handed down saying, look, guys, throw in
some nudity and some violence in there, because because why not. Well,
I mean, that's also part of the point of Tales
(07:25):
from the Crypt I think from the beginning is that
it was very much one of those old schlock h
B movie kind of throwbacks. Well yeah, and very much
like The Twilight Zone, the sort of idea of the
karma coming back and haunting you, because it was usually
about really awful people doing really awful things and then
having really awful things happened to them as a consequence.
Sometimes it was not such an awful person and really
(07:45):
awful things would happen to them, but it was a
general general rule, whereas with dream On it was like
lots of cringe humor and and some other stuff. There's
some great moments and that I remember when David Bowie
showed up and he was phenomenal on dream On. See.
I watched a lot of HBO when I was a kid.
HBO rolls out HBO two, which was later named HBO Plus.
(08:08):
So HBO two is a complementary platform essentially has the
same sort of stuff that HBO has, but a different
schedule made possible by this signal compression, which allows you
to put multiple channels on a single transmission line. This
was a big deal because cable operators didn't want to
yield up channels multiple channels to one provider, all right,
They only had so much bandwidth to to to provide
(08:31):
and so therefore if you only, for example, have have
forty spots to put stuff in, uh, you know, having
giving one channel two spots is a big deal, right,
exactly when you could be increasing the variety that you're
offering your potential customers, right, sure, and especially at the time,
I want to mention, everyone did not have like seven channels, right,
(08:52):
That's what signal compression made possible, because you could actually
put multiple channels across one transmission line by compressing the
signal of each one in multiplexing them. So with HBO,
that meant that they could eventually start creating uh, targeted
hbos that would be marketed more towards a specific audience.
So you might have one that has more action movies,
(09:13):
for example, and one with more comedy content or one
with more kid friendly stuff. I mean once again, like
this gave them the option of doing that without having
to put in as big an investment as something like
Festival or Take two was. Back in the other episodes
you heard us talk about those failed attempts at making
this kind of approach, but now the technology existed for
(09:35):
them to do it. Also in HBO finally broke into Europe.
Not physically, not like you know, illegally, they actually made
a foothold in Europe in Hungary. They had the Hungarian
cable system called Cable Calm. That's with Kay's for both
the cable and the calm, and that was partly backed
(09:55):
by Time Warner. So this system again did not use
satellite system that was common in the United States. They
didn't worry about getting a geostationary satellite in orbit above Hungary.
They instead made microwave transmission towers to get the signal
out to cable uper returning to that older technology, which
(10:16):
I mean was was less expensive. Overall, it was considered
too expensive to to put up a satellite for all
of Europe when you've got so many languages in such
a small area to work with, right, it was not
a practical approach in the case of Europe. I mean,
if if everyone in Europe spoke the same language, then
it would be a different story. But with all the
different languages and cultures, it meant that HBO had very
(10:37):
different products for each country that it started to get into.
In fact, that's a story that happens over and over.
It's repeated over and over in HBO's history, where they
would tailor make the experience for whatever market they were
going into. But that meant the microwave transmission approach made
way more sense than satellite. So they start over there,
(10:58):
over in Europe, and then they start creeping into some
other markets, about fifteen more European markets eventually. Meanwhile, that
year they also launched in Central and South America. YEP.
Much easier to do, as it turns out, because Central
and South America, with the exception of Brazil, share a
common language for the most part, so they had Spanish
(11:19):
speaking language channels that just broadcast by satellite over South
America and Central America. How the new channel was called
HBO ol A. I'm surprised they didn't go with HBoL A. Honestly,
don't look at me. I'm not the one who named it.
I'm just saying I'm surprised they didn't. They didn't do
it that way. Um. Yeah, it was available in countries
(11:42):
in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. I I
don't know how I feel about this HBO ol a thing.
I guess probably other folks aren't upset by it. It
just seems a little culturally insensible to me. But anyway,
HBO gets a coup with The Larry Sanders Show starring
Gary Schandling, and you might say, well, how is that
(12:04):
a coup? Well, Gary Schandling had really made a big
success in the eighties and early nineties with another show
called It's Gary Shandling Show, which was a send up
of sitcoms, and that aired on a different station, on Showtime,
so direct competitor to HBO. Yeah, so Gary Schandling gets
gets uh notoriety through Showtime and the It's Gary Shandling Show,
(12:27):
which by the way, I thought was hilarious, and then
moves over to HBO for what you could argue was
an even better show. The Larry Sanders Show was more
of a send up of late night television talk shows
like things like The Tonight Show or uh late night
type shows, those kind of things, with the character of
(12:49):
Larry Sanders played by Gary Schandling as this very vain,
very petty host And it was supposed to show you
kind of the backstage stuff that happens on these shows
where on on camera everyone's really friendly and interested in
each other, you know, the host has to be engaged
with the guest, but then when the cameras go off,
(13:11):
they become nasty, petty, terrible people. Uh. And it was
a pretty amusing show. This is also the year when
HBO launched another series called Real Sex, which was a
magazine format show about sexual matters and had a very frank,
open minded approach. They it was a little bit documentary
and style and um, they covered some pretty like some
(13:32):
things that could have easily been sensationalized or trivialized or
or or portrayed in such a way as to say,
aren't these people unusual? But but for the most part
it was. It was pretty welcoming of the unusual, which
was which was really nice. Actually, I mean, and I'm
not saying that it wasn't. I mean, you know, they
were putting it on the air. I think largely because
(13:52):
sex exactly some reason why they had so many so
much gratuitous nudity on dream on you know. But but
at the same time, the uh Michael folks, you know,
the CEO of of HBO said, look, this series is
what's giving us the money to fund all the documentaries
that you guys love, and we're trying to deal with
(14:14):
this frank subject matter in a way that's respectful, which
could have easily gone a different way. So yeah, Also, uh,
the HBO expands yet again. See now they're entering into
a new era of expansion where they're getting new customers.
They're not able to invent new customers in the United States. Uh,
you know, people do that on their own, but they're
not able to create a new market. So what they
(14:36):
did was they started to expand in other parts of
the world. So in the launched HBO Asia, which initially
service the Philippines and Thailand, but eventually through multiplexing, the
service would be available in uh several Asian languages and
spread to twenty three nations. I think Mandarin Chinese was
probably their biggest uh bet on that one. I would
(15:00):
imagine enormous population in China. Oh yes. Uh. Then in
HBO l A yeah, God, that's cringe. Where they know
they launched a second channel in Center in South America
as well as a Portuguese language channel in Brazil, so
once again expanding in other markets, and Michael Folks gets
(15:22):
promoted to overseeing all of Warner Music, and Jeff Bukes,
who we mentioned in the previous episode, steps up as
the new head of HBO, and in we get the
premiere of one of I would say a predecessor to
the really big breakout hits of HBO original program. It
was the first hour long drama series produced for HBO,
(15:44):
and that was Oz Yes, which of course was the
drama series about a maximum security prison and the shenanigans
they go on inside. Shenanigans is maybe a shanking, let's
let's have uh Yeah, And I never watched the series myself,
but but I've heard many colorful things about it. Yeah,
it was um, it was rough. It was a rough series.
(16:06):
But again, it was one of those things that HBO
did because one they knew there was going to be
a market for it, and to no one else could
really do it. They didn't have the money for it,
and they couldn't do it on broadcast television, basic cable.
So uh, that ended up getting some notice, but it
wasn't a breakaway hit. Yet HBO produces a mini series
(16:27):
called From From the Earth to the Moon, which was
a big budget mini series. It was produced by Tom
Hanks and Ron Howard. Tom Hanks did not star in it,
he was just a producer behind the camera. Mostly starred
actors who were not recognizable to most of the audience,
and that was on purpose. It was to be able
to put the focus on the drama of the story
(16:47):
and to recreate the time of the story without distracting
by saying, Oh, it's such and such from so and so.
Also to lower the costs a little bit, I imagine
probably also a factor. So this particular model would up
serving as an example for future mini series that HBO
would produce, including things like Band of Brothers or John Adams.
(17:07):
There was another one called Generation Kill, which probably is
not as well known as those two, but other ones
as well. So this was an approach to producing mini
series which HBO had not really done. It tried a
couple in the early eighties, but in general had stayed
away from mini series and had only been producing open
ended series where run it season after season until you
(17:28):
get tired and you stopped doing it. UH one one
of those that that happened that began with Sex in
the City at debut that year, and and as we
all know, became a pretty wildly successful spawned two films.
I mean, it was a big, big hit. Lots of
people either loved it or hated it, or loved to
hate it that love to hate it. I never ever
(17:51):
watched it. My knowledge of sex Sex in the City
was based solely upon other people's conversations, and just like
was aware of it culturally, but I never watched the show.
And uh, I got the feeling that I probably it's
probably I'm not the right audience for that particular. I'm
not sure either. I a fellow that I dated loved
(18:12):
it and and maybe watch the entire thing, so I
hear past tense, delightful fellow, Okay, alright, fair, fair enough,
all right. Well, anyway, Sex in the City, uh, Sex
and the City, I should say, ends up being one
the first of the big three uh breakaway hits of
(18:32):
HBO originals. We've got a lot more to say about HBO,
but before we can do that, let's take a quick break.
All right. It's ninete, It's the year after Sex in
the City debuts and gives HBO it's first real incredible
(18:55):
popular ship. Yebo ends up debuting another original series that
kind of sets the tone for what HBO original programming
is all about, at least for several series that followed
behind The Sopranos, obviously one of the most important series
in HBO history, not only that, but in cable history,
(19:15):
because The Sopranos was critically acclaimed. It was not just successful,
the critics loved it, and it would win Emmy's in
two thousand four and two thousand seven. It was nominated
for Emmy's every single year that it was eligible to
do so, because remember The Sopranos was one of those
shows that would go on a hiatus for more than
a year, but it would garner more than it would
(19:35):
garner a hundred and eleven nominations over the span of
its life. So this was a cable show winning an Emmy.
Now that's a big deal because for a while, cable
television was looked down on, like it was looked at
something that was always pretending to be as good as
broadcast TV. And so the Emmys were for broadcast television.
(19:56):
That's where the quality programming was and and Furthermore, something
that might be h c D or or a little
bit patronizing. Um, but yeah, but with with something is
as hard hitting and dramatic and beautiful as the Sopranos.
It was a hit. Yeah, So we started to see
cable shows being taken seriously. They no longer needed to
have their own little UH Awards ceremony. The ACE Cable
(20:18):
Awards were around back in the day where because they
weren't really eligible for the Emmys, they were only eligible
for for ACE Cable nominations. The Sopranos definitely knocked that
door wide open by consistently being one of the most
nominated shows while it was on the air. So it
really did change the entertainment industry. It's yet another reason
why we talked so much about HBO, because again, I
(20:42):
had this huge effect on how things happened following. You know,
the stuff that HBO would try, whether it was successful
or not, it would end up impacting the rest of
the industry and other industries as well. So then in
two thousand we get the third of the Big Three.
We've already got Sex in the City, We've already got
the Sopranos, So what comes next? Six under Yeah, this
(21:03):
was a show about two brothers who inherit their father's
funeral service business after their father passes away. And it
was a weird series. It's one of those series that's
really difficult to describe to someone who's never seen it,
because there were episodes where there's stuff that happened that
was pretty funny, there was stuff that happened that was
really tragic. There was stuff that happened where you felt
(21:24):
like there would be no scenery left unchewed. I mean
it was you couldn't easily the whole range. Yeah, So
it was one of those that ended up again being
wildly successful. So that's why you've got the Big three.
And OZ was not part of the Big three because
even though it was fairly popular and fairly well critically acclaimed,
it never reached that same level of popularity as the
(21:47):
other the other three. I think it was a little
bit less palatable to a very large market. Yeah. Yeah,
there's another big show we'll be talking about briefly that
had a similar issue that it appealed to one particular
market really really well and other markets not so well.
So two thousand two we have Jeff Bukes getting promoted
to president and chief operating officer of Time Warner. So
(22:09):
now he has left HBO and joined the you know,
the not left it, but he's now the head of
the parent company. And so Chris Albrecht takes Bukes's place
as head of HBO, and all Breck would end up
struggling a bit. He was very big on taking chances,
and he launched a lot of different programs on HBO,
but he was really trying to aim to to continue
(22:31):
this momentum of the Big Three, to make another series
that was just as impactful and compelling as those, and
as it turns out, that's really hard to do. Sometimes
you're just lucky, you know, you just strike on the
right formula that just happens to resonate with the audience. Uh.
And so even though they produced a lot of different shows,
(22:51):
and many of them were really good ones, they didn't
really hit the popularity of the Big Three, and so
HBO was kind of kind of floundering a little bit,
you know, trying lots of different stuff and occasionally launching
something really ambitious and then pulling the plug when realizing
that okay, this is this isn't that it wasn't making
them as much money as they thought it would have been.
(23:11):
In two thousand three, a show like that launched. It
was called Carnival, which I personally love so much. It's
really important. It's got the Kurgan in it, so I mean,
you can't really go wrong. Oh yeah, yeah, the Kurgan
as as of course his philosophy. We should all remember
it's better to burn out the feet away. Thank you,
thank you for that. Uh. And so it had excellent
(23:32):
critical reception. It it got five Emmy's among fifteen nominations
over the two seasons that it was on the air,
which is pretty incredible. Um. But it was also costing
the company two million dollars per episode, and um yeah,
it's the first in this whole range of series that
HBO would start pursuing. Um. But also that year, Time
(23:53):
Warners sold its stake in Comedy Central to Viacom for
one point to three billion dollars. So now Time War
is out of the comedy biz as far as Comedy
Central is concerned. But is still, of course, HBO is
still very much known for its comedy specials. And then
in two thousand and four we get an amazing comedy Deadwood,
a silly little show about cowboys. Deadwood was plenty funny. Um, yeah,
(24:18):
I guess if you found, uh, if you found if
you found the multiple uses of certain incredibly blue phrases
to be amusing, I did. Yeah. Well, no, I can't
blame you. I've only ever seen two episodes and they
weren't connected to each other, but they were both fascinating.
So it's one of those things where I really wish
I had been able to watch the whole series and
just stick around, folks, because I'm about to get excited
(24:39):
towards the end of this podcast. But yeah, So it's
it's a Shakespearean Western. The language was very much inspired
by Shakespeare. Now I'm a Shakespearean scholar so and I
love Westerns, so both of these things appealed to me.
But it's absolutely filthy. Shakespearean Shakespeare's absolutely filthy. Just that's true.
That where the words don't mean the same thing anymore,
(24:59):
that's air. So yeah. Then they also launched in two
thousand four Entourage, which was a show about making fun
of the Hollywood lifestyle and trying to break into Hollywood,
uh and and being a hanger on to someone who
has met with some meager success Uh, it has fewer
foul mouth cowboys in it. But Albert really struggled to
get another big hit like The Sopranos, and most of
(25:21):
the shows that he produced were either critically acclaimed but
sparsely watched, or they were just outright panned. So a
couple of the ones that didn't do well at all
were with titles like K Street and Unscripted, and that's
two series that most people don't talk about anymore. Then
there was also Louis c Kay's Lucky Louis sitcom, which
didn't do very well either. Uh. Of course would pave
(25:44):
the way for the actual series Louis, which is not
on HBO, But the this earlier attempt was not a success. Now,
Deadwood lasted three seasons and then was very quietly killed
off because HBO didn't want to make a big deal
out of ending Deadwood. I mean, their their whole like
corporate identity was that we produce shows that other people
(26:08):
cannot or will not do. We have that money, we
have that flexibility, we have the customers who want it,
so we're gonna do it well. And then they realized, oh,
we might not actually have that much money. Yeah, Deadwood
as it turns out another very expensive, changing the period
costume drama with really big actors and yeah, really big actors,
(26:29):
really really expensive set pieces, and I mean it was
a very ambitious show that cost a lot of money. Meanwhile,
they also had The Wire, which had an even smaller
audience than Deadwood did, but the Wire was less expensive
to produce and was also critically acclaimed. Yeah it was.
It was still very much critically acclaimed. So if you've
got two series and you've got one that's really expensive
(26:51):
and it's critically acclaimed, but only seems to be attracting
mostly a male audience because men tend to like Westerns
and women tend not to. Those are just general trends,
obviously not descriptive of everyone everywhere. So don't write me
and tell me how you are a woman who loves
Westerns and that I'm wrong. I actually wonder how the
(27:12):
numbers on dead Wood chok out. Now I need to
research this well. At any rate, they weren't good enough
for HBO, so they wanted to very quietly kind of
back off. And they had originally said that they were
thinking about doing four seasons, they actually only did three. Um,
they said that they were going to do two movies
to follow up and tie up all the loose ends,
which never never have happened. They haven't surfaced, so pretty
(27:36):
sure that that ship has sailed to mix some cowboy,
pirate and metaphors. But but The Wire they kept going
because it was critically claimed and cheap. Yeah, so this
way they got the benefit of having a critically acclaimed
television show on their network, but it wasn't a huge
financial loss to the company. It was and to be fair,
involved fewer contrasting plaids, which I know not everybody a
(27:59):
prey dates to the level that I do. You obviously
haven't watched The Wire season two. Contrasting Plaids was the
subtitle of that season. I just made all that up.
But yeah, so so that's you know, they wanted to
have the benefit of having this kind of critically acclaimed
programming on their channel, but obviously not have the albatross
of an incredibly expensive production around the corporate neck. Yeah,
(28:22):
which is why in two thousand five they started realm Okay,
so clearly they did not. Maybe they learned from their
mistakes and that's how they were able to repeat them
almost exactly well, I think that they learned to those
I think that they made those mistakes after Rome had
already premiered, that they were still and that excited, let's
do everything we want to do phase with Rome. But
it was also very expensive, hard to get viewers into it.
(28:45):
They did, they canceled it after two seasons. Now, of course,
originally they had talked about just being a mini series
where it would have only have been uh, something like
twelve episodes, but then they said that there would come
back for a second season, and sometime in that second
season they're like, whoops, okay, let's just let this quietly
die too. And there's only so many times you can
watch someone fall out of a toga. I guess. Yeah.
(29:06):
By the way, still in that era of hey, we
can get away with it because we're on we're a
paid television station, so let's create content. There's lots of
gratuitous violence and or nudity. Rome had plenty of both.
All right, home stretch for this part of HBO's history.
Before we can get to that, let's take another quake
(29:27):
break two thousand seven. In November of two thousand seven,
a major event happened that affected all all television channels. Everywhere,
because at least in the United States, well, all television
channels that were producing original content. Yeah, because that's when
(29:50):
the Writer's Guild of America had a strike. Now, yeah,
animation was fine because they weren't in the Writer's Guild.
I knew a lot of animators who were grumbling a
about this. But, uh, the Writer's Guild of America had
a strike, and so HBO had banked a lot of
stuff that helped them kind of coast through the writer's
strike without too much trouble. They had the mini series
(30:12):
John Adams that helped them get through it. They had
another season of The Wire that helped him get through it.
But HBO did not get through two thousand and seven
without some major trouble. For example, Chris Albrecht, the head
of HBO, was arrested following a physical altercation. It was
actually he was arrested because he uh physically threatened his
girlfriend at the time. Yeah, and that's not good. And
(30:35):
apparently it wasn't his first offense either. Yeah, and time
Warner called for his resignation. Actually, I read the letter
he wrote Albrecht wrote where he was very frank and
admitted guilt and said I thought I had put these
problems behind me. I was. I was an alcoholic. I
went to alcoholics Anonymous two years ago. I thought, you know,
I can handle drinking alcohol. And clearly I was wrong.
(30:56):
So he was very much admitting his fault in it.
So at least there's that. I mean, it's still a terrible,
terrible thing. But um, he didn't deny it, so I
guess that's something. So Time Warner now is saying, all right, well,
what are we going to do with HBO? Who's gonna
lead it? There was not a specific person that they
could point to and say, this is the person upon
(31:17):
whose whose shoulders HBO should rest. So they ended up
picking three people to kind of divide up the the
entire job of ruling this kingdom all of whom had
been working for HBO since the nine Yep, you had
Bill Nelson who became the CEO of HBO, Eric Kessler
became one of the co presidents, and the other was
(31:38):
Richard Plepler. And yeah, they all had experience. Richard Plepler
did not have any experience in programming going into it,
but would turn out to have some very keen ideas
on where to go. Because remember this is still when
HBO is trying to recapture the glory of the Big
Three and try and find another another original series that
they can they can really be proud of, and they
(31:59):
can that can care area the company. So around the
same time, in two thousand seven, little upstart company called Netflix,
which had been in business for a few years, announced
that it was going to create a streaming service, an
online streaming service. All right, they had already been offering
DVDs via mail, but at this point they started offering streaming. Yep. So, uh,
this becomes another competitor to HBO because HBO now they
(32:23):
still have as part of their business this idea of uncensored,
uncut movies that you can watch but with Netflix streaming,
and we can watched them whenever you want. Yeah, assuming
assuming that the title is in their library, which we
all know is a huge assumption. And and and furthermore,
they obviously at that time, we're not making their own
original content. Yeah. Yeah, Netflix was pretty much beholden to
(32:47):
whatever uh studios were producing content at that time. But yeah,
this was another another competitor, and it was outside the
cable industry. Everyone got a little nervous at this point.
Including HBO. Oh sure. Speaking of that original content. However,
in two thousand eight, HBO debut True Blood, um, which
was really its first, its first big hit since those
(33:09):
Big three. Yeah yeah, this one was a huge hit.
It was extremely popular. You can debate upon whether or
not it merits that. I know there are such debates.
I've never watched the series, so I can't comment one
way the other. It's terrible. I love it, yeah, okay,
I mean terrible things have their place in this world. Uh.
Then other shows such as Boardwalk, Empire, The News Room,
(33:30):
and Veep followed. So these were shows that didn't necessarily
have the same following as the Big three, but again,
we're critically acclaimed, seemed to be popular among the audiences
that really love these shows. Um. And then you started
seeing a couple of major breakthrough hits that that followed
so three Yeah yeah, stuff like Girls and Game of Thrones.
(33:51):
Do I can't do anymore because they'll they'll take us down. Yeah. No,
Game of Thrones, big big hit obviously or HBO. UM.
I don't have HBO. By the way, this is where
I mentioned I don't own HBO, but I read all
the books, so you can't spoil me, suckers. Yeah, you
can tell me about stuff that happened in the show
(34:12):
but didn't happen the books. But here's the thing, I
don't care because I read the books, so to me,
that's the story. So bring it, is what I'm saying,
unless your name is George RR. Martin, in which case,
do not bring it, sir. I will be happy to
read it when you publish it, and take your time.
Take your time, sir, as long as you need. Yeah, no, no, no, no.
As as Neil Gaman once said, George R. Martin is
not your bitch. Yeah. And then Paul and Storm sang
(34:35):
a song, and then George RR. Martin came out and
broke their their guitars. It's a great, great moment on YouTube.
Look it up. For For the record, I've also read
the books. You cannot spoil me either. Yes, that's a
challenge unless you're George R. Martin. Two. Yeah, I don't.
I don't want him writing in and say guess which
Stark dies next? Want it? I totally want him to
do that. Actually, oh, come on, it would be the best. Well,
(34:56):
then we can hold it over everyone else is George R. Martin.
If you're listening, please right, it's spoiled me, spoil Lauren.
We'd have to give them just your email address and
the one that I give out of the end it
goes to both of us. Lauren, this is this is
irresponsible of you. All right, Just send her a direct tweet, Okay.
So in two thousand, HBO launches hbo Go, which is
its online streaming service for HBO subscribers, which allow HBO
(35:20):
customers to watch content on demand for the first time,
only three years after Netflix had already been doing the
same thing. And of course it's limited to just people
who will Theoretically, it's limited to just people who have
an HBO subscription. So if you do not subscribe to
cable and subscribe to HBO, you cannot access hbo Go legally.
(35:43):
I say legally because it is my understanding and again
I do not do. This is my understanding that some
people occasionally will lend out their logins to friends or
family who do not have HBO so that they can
watch things. In fact, that'll tie into something we're gonna
talk about just a moment. Now we're we're finally up
to current day. So here's the thing we don't have
(36:05):
to take the way back machine back to present day
because we are in present day now. So the way
back machine. Yeah, now, granted we have been traveling through
time for three episodes and it's gotten a little warm
in this room. Yeah, because that's the problem with being
in this way back machine. It's like a quarter of
the size of our studio. So it's been a little,
been a little Let's just go ahead and step out
(36:26):
right now. Okay, that's better. Yeah, that's way better. All right,
So we're in present day now. First of all, Uh,
Game of Thrones, that that series we mentioned just a
couple of points ago before we got off on our
George R. Martin please spoil us rand Uh. It's turned
out to be the most pirated show in the world.
(36:48):
Almost more people illegally downloaded the Game of Thrones premiere
for season four then the next closest rival, which was
The Walking Dead, so almost more people's That shows that
the show is incredibly popular, and in fact, in April tween,
(37:08):
Game of Thrones broke the record for most pirated episode
within the first twenty four hours of going live, with
one point one seven million unique IP addresses torrenting the
premiere of season four, So that doesn't count all the
people who used uh, someone else's HBO go profile. Okay,
but but but I but I want to say here,
(37:30):
it's drawing some seventeen million legit viewers per episode. Well
legit or legit ish um, you know, you know, again,
not not counting people who are stealing that password. Um.
But the thing is is that HBO officially does not
care about that thing. CEO Richard Pepler has said, uh,
and I quote it's a terrific marketing vehicle for the
(37:51):
next generation of viewers and also quote, we're in the
business of creating addicts. They've actually noticed that people have
subscribe to HBO after pirating stuff because they wanted to
have access to this and I didn't want the problems
of either using someone else's HBO Go pass, which might crash,
because that's happened a couple of times. That happened. On
(38:12):
the premiere of season four, too many people were trying
to access the HBO Go network and as a result,
it crashed under the demand, which caused a lot of
people to complain. I maintained that the people complaining we're
borrowing someone else's HBO Go pass. I think that's probably
an accurate I haven't done any research on this. This
is based upon the people I saw on Twitter complaining.
(38:33):
I'm like, you don't subscribe to HBO. You're using someone
else's pass, and you're complaining that doesn't work entitled much anyway,
in the business of creating addicts, it's apparently it works
really well. So, yeah, it seems like it's going pretty well. See,
I guess I see some figures here you've got in
(38:53):
this in this notes here, Lauren. Yeah, they're they're doing
pretty okay. They're they're operating at a profit margin of
the some one point three billion dollars they rake in
every year. UM. They currently have some a hundred and
thirty million subscribers worldwide, and and HBO that their subscription
base is growing faster than it has in the past
seventeen years. To be fair, Netflix is growing even faster
(39:17):
still and has surpassed HBO in the number of subscribers
it did so back in Q three UM. But Netflix
is operating costs are a whole lot higher, being that
it's still busy building its original content and investing in
all of those new markets. And HBO recently made a
partnership with a direct competitor to Netflix that could really
(39:39):
shake things up. We're talking about Amazon Prime. Yeah, yeah,
they they announced a deal where Amazon is going to
get to stream a bunch of HBOS original content. Um,
not all of it. I think that Game Thrones in
Sex and the City were both left out of the deal.
Game of Thrones specifically, not surprising anyone has left out
of the deal. Yeah, but a lot of their older content,
(40:01):
in particular things like The Sopranos and say Deadwood, will
be allowed to stream on Amazon Prime. So that has
me really excited because now I'll finally get to watch
both those shows. I am not seen them so to me.
I mean, granted, I know a lot about what happens
in them, it's just culturally you do share share, But
but that's not that's not really the point. Now. The
performances and the execution, uh and literal senses in both
(40:26):
in both those shows are what will be really interesting
to me because I've always heard so much about them.
Now I hope that I'm able to go in with
with managed expectations and not just you know, super hyped,
because obviously very few things live up to a super
hyped expectations, but I'm looking forward to seeing them. But honestly,
Deadwood lived up to the hype for me, I'm I'm
looking forward to seeing it from the beginning because, like
(40:47):
I said, I only saw two episodes completely out of context,
and that was that was troubling under each listeners, these
these shows are for mature audiences only or immature way
does that let let me out immature mature audiences? Yeah?
So uh so, so, so don't go. Don't don't go
running out and watching this parents, that would be you know,
(41:10):
don't don't be like Jonathan was watching Tales from the
Crypt when he was a little kid. Clearly no damage
was done to either of us. We turned out completely normal. Um.
But at any rate, now, this this entire Amazon deal,
especially with Amazon expanding its empire to include that new
fire TV gig, that that dollar Internet to TV device
(41:31):
streaming thing, um, could potentially mean a bit of a
crunch for Netflix. Yeah yeah, I mean this is this
is the next era, right, So I'm sure Netflix's response
will be to go and invest even more in original programming,
because again, you have to differentiate yourself. Um. They you know,
they've had some very famous issues with keeping films in
their libraries and licensing licenses expiring. People get upset about that.
(41:56):
The funny thing is that's the way it's worked ever
since this whole pay TV model even started. I mean
HBO had the same issues, which they would have a
movie under license and then the license expires and they
don't have access to that film anymore. That's why you're
not going to see Star Wars all the time. It's
only whenever the license comes up and they're allowed to
show them. Also, as we said in our streaming content episodes,
(42:19):
Netflix's game plan right now is too and and I
think this was the quote, become HBO before HBO can
become us. Ye, So so the race is on. Both
both of them are are racing out the gates, and uh,
we don't know. Maybe they'll maybe they'll be a photo finish,
Maybe we'll have two amazing content providers that we all enjoy,
(42:40):
Maybe one will come out on top. We'll have to
wait and see. But yeah, it's been great getting a
chance to talk about HBO. And we know that we
really went super in depth with this one, and that's
not normally what we do with our episodes, but in
this case, because it had such an impact on the
way cable television works today and the reason we even
have cable in our our cities. We felt that it
(43:01):
merited this kind of discussion and that wraps up the
HBO story as a May fourteen. Like I've said multiple times,
I'll probably have to go back do an update talk
about what's happened since then. Um, but yeah, if there
are any topics that you would like me to cover
in the future, whether it's a company, trend in tech,
(43:23):
a specific technology and how it works, or you know,
anything along those lines that is related to technology, let
me know you can do that. As I said over
on Twitter, the handle we uses tech stuff h s
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
(43:44):
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.